The use of former PCCs, some of which are languishing in a desert adjacent to El Paso, TX airport, would be a boon to the city. The cost to restore and modernize (i.e. air conditioning)would be far less than buying new, and the streetcars would give the city an historic cachet similar to San Francisco, New Orleans, and Memphis.

I'll be interested to see what trip generation points route designers have designated on the proposed line.

Sloan

P. S.: I wonder if the El Reno, OK trolley is back in service, if it survived the recent devastating tornado.

El Paso in west Texas is designing its heritage streetcar line based on an informal promise of $90 million in state funds, KVIA television reports. The City Council-approved plan is to rebuild the ex-El Paso City Lines PCCs, bought secondhand from San Diego, for heritage service.

Based on the informal commitment of $90 million, the city council allocated $5 million for planning, and $4.4 million of that has already been spent so that construction can start once the state money arrives. City officials said Texas Transportation Commission Chairman Ted Houghton committed $90 million for the trolleys once the city performed a preliminary study and applied for the money.

Houghton, who is from El Paso, has since stated that the Commission is still evaluating the streetcar line's design, including whether bridges along the route can accommodate the streetcars. Once the design has been approved by engineers, then Houghton could work to obtain the funds from a transportation allocation made by the legislature.

The project to restore stored El Paso PCC cars remains broadly supported by area leaders, but is subject to debate about whether it will become a reality.

City officials hope to begin construction of the 5.2-mile El Paso Trolley in August, according to local media. Current plans call for the line to run north from the bottom of Stanton Street near the Downtown area to the University of Texas at El Paso, loop the campus, and run back south on Oregon Street.

Transportation officials in El Paso, Tex., are finalizing agreements with two firms to build a $97 million, 4.8-mile streetcar line approved by City Council in 2014. The state-funded project involves refurbishing and placing back into service historic El Paso City Lines PCC cars that operated until the 1970s.